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Aug. 31 and Sept. 1: from Williams Lake to Bellingham with muffins

The landscape changed dramatically as we continued south. I took this photo near Kamloops, BC; note the yellow grass — it hadn’t rained in weeks, and wildfires were raging in the area until a few days ago. The larger ones farther south (mainly in the State of Washington) are still burning.

We spent the evening of August 31 and the following morning with Carol and Rod Willis in Coldstream. The parents of my friend Graham, they were wonderful hosts! Over wine and dinner we discussed topics ranging from the vagaries of on-the-ground development work to detaching oneself from material concerns. Fortunately we kept the latter idea within manageable limits, and so I left with delicious blueberry muffins made by Carol and a box full of fruit for the road, as well as two of Rod’s–apparently legendary–hand-drawn maps just in case my GPS would go on strike…

We drove for about five hours, mostly in pouring rain. Visibility was under twenty meters as we cross a mountain pass just west of Kelowna, BC. The rain stopped for a few hours but has since returned with a vengeance.

I spotted this sign in Bellingham, WA, our final destination for the day — a timely starting point for my research project on tinted windows. The latter were few and far between in both Alaska and western Canada, a fact that–while interesting per se–delayed the inquiry. Given that la bestia‘s check engine light keeps coming on, I have a feeling that we’ll get to spend quite some time near car repair and detailing facilities during the coming week.